This application relates to vibrating exercise devices.
Exercise devices are known which cause a user's muscles to travel between two positions during which the user's muscles expand and contract. The resistance is typically provided by the effect of gravity on weights, or by a spring resistance or motors. Beginning in the 1980's Russian patents began to disclose vibrating platforms on which a person stood during exercise, with the vibrating platform superimposing a vibration that caused the user's muscles to expand and contract short distances arising from the vibration while simultaneously undergoing the longer expansion and contraction arising from the normal exercise. But these vibrating platforms require lifting the entire weight of the user, thus requiring heavier equipment and stronger motors causing the vibration. There is thus a need for a simpler way to provide a vibrational force directly to a more specific muscle or muscle groups to a person while exercising.
Further, a vibrating platform shakes the entire person, including the joints and muscles not undergoing the longer expansion and contraction. Shaking an entire person is undesirable. The prior art has devised various ways to use a vibrating platform and help reduce shaking an entire person, but the resulting apparatus is complex and heavy. There is thus a need for a simpler way to provide a vibrational resistive load to selected muscles of a person who is exercising.